


Way of the Heavenly Fist - Part 1: Heart to Heart

by Shivaree76



Series: Way of the Heavenly Fist [1]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Dominance, F/F, Femdom, Fighting, Healing, Martial Arts, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 13:20:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14136861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shivaree76/pseuds/Shivaree76
Summary: Inside an empty gym, a mother and her daughter have a friendly chat over some tea. Cassandra is troubled by her past and anxious about her future. Lady Shiva is there to offer her a new way. One that may allow her daughter to accept all that she is without sacrificing what she wants to be. But what is the Heavenly Fist?





	Way of the Heavenly Fist - Part 1: Heart to Heart

**Author's Note:**

> (disclaimer: this story is set pre-Flashpoint, somewhere after the end of Batgirl V1, in a world where that one OYL arc -you know the one- never happened)

            A thin string of vapor flowed around Lady Shiva’s fingers with almost practiced reverence as she poured the tea into Cassandra’s cup. It seemed to her that even boiled water seemed wary of touching her, lest it incur her displeasure. When she was finished, her mother gently returned the pearly white kettle to its equally immaculate dish and turned her attention to her own cup. The oddly warm, almost soothing smile that adorned her razor sharp features never once dropped through the whole motion.

            “You underestimate yourself, Cassandra,” she said before sipping her tea. Cassandra followed suit in silence, thinking about her words. Shiva patiently waited for her to lay down her cup before continuing: “Not your strength or your skills. But rather, the full extent of what you are capable of doing.”

            “I do not kill,” Cassandra said.

            “Of course. But it is what you were trained to do. Born to do, even.”

            “I will not kill,” she said, stronger than before.

            Shiva’s smile dropped. Her face suddenly grew cold and harsh, like a sword drawn from its scabbard. Cassandra found herself clutching her cup just a little harder. She knew she would never attack her by surprise. Such was not her mother’s way, at least not with her. But the only certainty when dealing with Lady Shiva was that nothing was certain.

            “Whatever made you think I want you to?” she asked, then took another sip, longer than before. When the cup came down, she was smiling again. “You have outgrown the circumstances of your birth, but they cannot be denied. Still they haunt you. A weapon may be used as a tool, but it remains a weapon.”

            Cassandra unglued her eyes from her mother’s for a moment to scan the empty gym, drawn in by the empty racks nailed to the furthest wall. They held weapons once. Training tools, wooden swords and blunt sabers used for forms and slow sparring, but weapons nonetheless.

            “I’m nobody’s weapon,” Cassandra offered in retort, and quickly added: “or tool.”

            “Pleasing words. But they will not lift the weight from your shoulders. Only acceptance of who you are will do that.”

            “I’m not a killer.”

            “I have yet to call you one. I never will. I have fought you enough times to know you are no slayer,” Shiva replied. Her cup was half empty now. “In fact, only one person in this room is even suggesting it.”

            Cassandra looked inside her cup, into the amber water dimly lit by the gym’s pale electric lights. Her reflection stared back at her, hazy and darkened.

            “You underestimate yourself,” her mother’s voice continued. “No matter how many people you save or how many enemies you defeat, a part of you always sees you as a killer. Maybe to defend yourself from temptation. Or maybe to drive you to further acts of redemption. It makes no difference. In the end, this will only bring you deeper suffering.”

            More silence followed. Shiva waited calmly for Cassandra to answer, giving her all the time in the world to take in her words and come up with some of her own. But when she did, even she found them underwhelming.

            “You said it yourself. It doesn’t really matter. Helping other people, saving the city, it’s not about me.”

            “Your self-sacrifice is assuredly heroic, but also unnecessary,” Shiva said, her cup now down to its last quarter. “There is a way to bridge the gap between the two sides of yourself, between the killer you were raised to be and the hero you became. This is because neither side truly exists. Their separation is artificial and a result of an equally artificial failure in your training.”

            “I was trained to be a killer. Nothing more.”

            “And therein lies the failure. For to harm, you must also learn how to heal. To take life, you must also give life.”

            “Are you suggesting I have a son of my own?”

            Shiva’s smile widened. Her shoulders rose an inch. For a moment, she seemed about to laugh. Cassandra wasn’t sure she could take it. The words had come out so easily, almost innocently, compared to everything else she’d said so far. The menacing sight of her mother’s teeth peeking through her red lips made her regret such ease.

            “Not quite. But I am saying you were only ever taught one half of this. And you were taught it exceedingly well. Hence this imbalance. Until you learn to heal as much as you are capable of harming, you will remain at odds with yourself.”

            “But who would teach me? Who even could?”

            Lady Shiva put her cup, now empty, down on the worn-out wooden table. She let out the smallest, gentlest of breaths, exhaling patience through her lips. And her smile widened again. With finely-measured timing, she raised from her chair and swayed softly past Cassandra, into the center of the old gym, stopping right at the edge of the dusty old ring. Then she turned to her daughter.

            “Would you like to climb in first?”

* * *

 

            The ring boards creaked quietly under her feet. The mat, which had clearly been a deep blue some years ago, was a discolored shade of gray. The ropes were a few degrees short of taut and had given way dangerously easily. But something about being in the squared circle with her mother made Cassandra feel oddly relaxed. There was an air of lawfulness, the illusion of sporting rules and boundaries put in place to tame the savagery of combat. After so many fights to the death with her, the mere idea of getting to fight Shiva for stakes lower than life itself felt almost inviting.

            “You cannot correct the imbalance unless you see it can be corrected. You must believe you can become as good at easing pain as you are at dealing it. You must feel it. Until you do, you will continue to underestimate yourself.”

            “If you’ve brought a ‘test subject’ to demonstrate on, I’m leaving.”

            “I would never involve a stranger in this affair, Cassandra,” Shiva said, then turned towards her daughter, “not when I have you. Come. Show me your back.”

            “My… back.”

            “Yes. Remove your cape, turn around and show me your back.”

            The two women were standing in the middle of the ring, scant feet away. Cassandra found herself silently wishing she’d stopped way, way before that. Turning her back on her mother, even when she was looking so utterly calm and unthreatening, was about as welcome a suggestion as doing the same to a tiger. Possibly even less. At least Cassandra would hear the tiger coming.

            “Why?” Cassandra asked. Given their history together, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable question. And Shiva treated it thusly.

            “There are twelve main meridian channels in your body, eight extraordinary ones, and three hundred and sixty one points near the surface of your skin where these channels interject. Your qi flows through these channels, as does mine and every other living thing’s in this world. I will use one of those pressure points to show you what you are truly capable of doing with the skills you possess, but you must trust me.”

            “Okay…”

            “I know I am asking you to go against your instincts, but the point I need is located on your spine. There is no other way to get to it.”

            “Is there really?”

            “Well,” Shiva said, and crooked her smile just one terrifying inch, “I can beat you into submission and leave you sprawled on the floor, physically incapable of stopping me from reaching your back. But I am trying to make a point here.”

            “Hah,” Cassandra laughed, unsure if her mother actually intended to make that pun but mostly just stalling for time. “’Point’. I get it.”

            “I know you do. Now, your cape.”

            Cassandra took one look into her mother’s eyes, paused, and then unclasped her cape. It wasn’t the hard, unwavering certainty in her look that convinced her, that overwhelming confidence her mother seemed to project at every waking moment. Somewhere, deeper still, she saw something she’d never seen in her before. It was a glimmer, a tiny speck, the slightest dark patch of pained want within that impenetrable stare. It told her that, for once, Lady Shiva did not want to fight her. Or at least, she was willing to try her best to keep it from coming to that.

            Cassandra turned around and walked away to leave the cape under one of the corners. In her own way, she was testing her mother’s resolve, to see if she could resist the target. It was the final test. And Shiva passed it. As Cassandra turned back to her, she hadn’t lifted one foot off her spot, although the more skeptic of her instincts told her that proved nothing. She’d seen her clear larger distances in just one leap. But for now, Lady Shiva seemed content as she took off her jacket and casually cast it aside, landing with a thud on the opposite corner post, loud enough to make Cassandra wonder just how heavy that thing really was.

            “I will strike a single point in your back,” Shiva started while she removed her gloves, “which will have a unique effect on the flow of qi through your entire body. This point was first discovered by a monk in the Shaolin Monastery, who had only begun to unravel its mysteries when the monastery was burned down by the Qing dynasty. The monk died and his name was lost to time, but the first draft of his discoveries was rescued by Fung Dou Mak, one of the five elders who survived the attack.”

            “And what is this ‘unique effect’?”

            “You will feel no pain at all, Cassandra,” her mother said, reaching out towards her with one naked hand. “This much I promise.”

            Cassandra studied her mother’s right arm for a while, wondering just how much of what she had said was true. A hand could just as easily bandage a wound as it could stick a knife into someone, but looking at Shiva’s hand -- at her whole, unclothed arm, it was hard to believe it was capable of anything but destruction. Its surface was a menacing mountain range of hardened muscles, punctuated by minuscule scars invisible to an untrained eye, culminating in a hand that was as deadly as any weapon invented by man. Cassandra’s jaw twitched with the painful memory of that hand crashing down on it, as a fist, as a palm, over and over again, until she had to force herself to look beyond the hand at the face of the woman extending it.

            The glimmer was still there. Cassandra still had no name for it. But it was enough to make her turn around, put her own hands behind her neck, close her eyes and take a deep breath.

            “Thank you,” her mother said.

            Lady Shiva inched into position. Cassandra could hear it, her feet making the boards under them creak with intent, her muscles tightening like a bowstring, her breathing steady but soulful. She was never this loud. Not even in the heat of battle. Cassandra reckoned she was doing it for her benefit, so she didn’t feel her mother was hiding any moves from her. It was an oddly caring thing of her to do, and it made Cassandra relax a little. Even if she was wrong, even if Shiva had turned into the kind of murderer who would go to such lengths only to create an opening to kill her, she’d managed to blindly put her trust in her mother. To believe in her genuine intentions to do no harm, just this once. Was that not a virtue? Was that not--

            “GHAKK!”

            She felt a split-second of pressure, aimed with pinpoint accuracy at a single spot somewhere in the center of her column, and Cassandra braced herself for the wave of pain that was sure to follow. But it never came. Instead, a sense of comfortable numbness washed over her, weakening her knees and loosening her joints but without making her fall over. Her body felt confused, bewildered by the introduction of an idea hitherto unknown to it. Her mind wasn’t doing any better. It wasn’t a feeling. It felt like the complete lack of feeling -- all feeling. Her senses were there, but wildly scrambled. She felt weighed down by the colossal effort of trying to give this new state of sensation a proper name, and that weight was what made her bend a knee and fall. Suddenly alarmed, Cassandra focused on the knee, hoping that the pain of it colliding with the mat, however small and inconsequential, would be familiar enough to bring her out of this dazed state.

            But there was no pain. There was a dry sound and a gust of wind on her face as she fell, but no pain at all. Instead… Once upon a time, what now felt like ages ago, she’d taken down a thieving motorcyclist with a flying knee to his face, hard enough to shatter his helmet’s visor. After patrol, Steph treated the soreness of her kneepad by going through half their medicine cabinet, applying all manner of creams and liquids to its bruised surface. But it was her worried yet tender hands that now came to Cassandra’s mind, carefully massaging her knee, that same knee, until it became an engine of pleasure, sending jolts of soft bliss across her entire aching body.

            The small and inconsequential impact of Cassandra’s knee against the mat right now felt like Steph’s soft, wet massages. Times a hundred.

            “The monk had been a soldier before joining the monastery,” a voice called from beyond the haze, “and he had dealt a great share of pain and suffering. So when he started learning Shaolin martial arts, he longed to find a way to make his new strikes less than painful. He studied medicine and acupuncture, followed the flow of qi across the body, and found a point where the meridians that lord over pain converged. And then he set about reversing that flow.”

            “Wh-what… is happening to me?”

            “The ink on his manuscript was still wet when the first flames were lit, and the scroll changed hands too often for the technique to ever be further developed. Until I found it. Studying it, I knew exactly what the monk intended. He had created a technique that would allow him to defeat his opponents not with agony, but with pleasure.”

            “Pleasure?” Cassandra gasped, struggling to look up at Lady Shiva, who was circling around her in a rather vulture-like way.

            “For the next twenty minutes, any pain you would ordinarily feel will be reversed and turned into an equal amount of pleasure. Sometimes, even more. This will continue until you lose consciousness or the twenty minutes are over,” Shiva explained before stopping in front of her and looking down on her flustered, sweating face with a knowing smile. “Even death would feel like all the blessings of heaven rained down upon you at the same time. But I assure you it will not come to that.”

            “Howww?” Cassandra moaned as she placed her hand on her thigh and pulled herself up. She was heavy and clumsy but hardly felt like it. In fact, the sole recognizable emotion she could feel was a lightness of head that was still unlike any she’d ever felt.

            “Like so,” Shiva said, and slapped her daughter square in her face.

            In those frozen split-seconds as Cassandra’s body rushed to meet the mat, her mind returned to another occasion, years ago, where the blade of an assassin had managed to make a small cut across her mask, through her cheek. She’d been careless, distracted by something else, but Barbara didn’t care. She cleaned the wound and bandaged it with mechanical expertise, but sensing her anger at herself, had let her hand linger on Cassandra’s wounded cheek for a few seconds, caressing it lovingly, telling her with no words that it was all going to be all right.

            Her mother’s slap felt like Barbara’s kind, tender caresses. Times a thousand.

            “Unfortunately, I have yet been unable to find an equivalent pressure point on the front of a person,” Shiva said, looking down on her panting daughter, “so its combat applications are limited. But that is beyond the point. This is what I wanted to show you. This is what you can accomplish. You are the greatest fighter I have ever met. Nothing can stop you from becoming the greatest healer.”

            Through hazy eyes, Cassandra focused on the drips of sweat falling with great haste from her brow to the dry, aging mat as she pulled herself back up. Her body felt lighter than ever, arms and legs so numb that she could barely tell they were there at all. There was an incredible weightlessness to her that curiously only made it harder to stand up. After a few failed attempts, she settled for turning herself on her back, curling up a little and focusing her attention on her mother, who was now looking down on her with her hands on her wide hips. A satisfied smile crossed Shiva’s face.

            “Now, if this demonstration has convinced you, we can sit here and enjoy the rest of this quiet evening together,” she continued, “but if you would prefer to test the limits of this technique with me, then all you have to do is… get up.”

            Cassandra calmed her breath and steadied her hands, which for some mysterious reason had involuntarily found their way between her thighs. Slowly, groggily, she rose, first to one knee, then to her feet. Waiting for her at the top, Lady Shiva took a step back, put her fist on her open palm, and bowed at her daughter. Her smile widened. Her eyes sharpened. And her voice sent a shiver down Cassandra’s spine.

            “Oh, we are going to have a wonderful time.”

* * *

 

            Nineteen minutes had passed since Shiva had pressed Cassandra’s back. To her, it may as well have been nineteen years. But she was beyond caring. Her mind was all but gone and her body barely acknowledged her commands any more, answering only to her uncontrollable desires. And even if they’d been awoken by Shiva’s technique, Cassandra recognized they were coming from within her. Her mind felt clearer than ever. And that only made the cravings more powerful.

            At some point in the fight, her uniform had gotten too tight for her. It chafed against her burning skin, and although the sensation, just like every other so far, had been immensely pleasurable, her body ached to be free. So around the third or fourth time her mother had knocked her down to the floor, she had pulled down her pants and nearly ripped her top off, exposing her naked body to the cool, still winter air locked inside the gym. It seemed to grow colder by the minute, as if trying to fight back against the intense heat burning inside Cassandra. It was losing.

            So was Cassandra, for that matter, but in her best of days it already took a monumental effort of her to stand toe to toe with her mother. This wasn’t her best of days. Although considering she’d had four near-blinding orgasms in slightly over a quarter of an hour and was well on her way to a fifth, perhaps her definition of “best” and “losing” needed readjustment.

            Letting out a long, low groan and taking two shaky steps forward, Cassandra threw her half-naked body at her still fully-clothed mother. Large beads of sweat came crashing down on the mat as her arms flailed around, grasping at the three and sometimes four Lady Shivas she could make out through the haze. To her credit, she’d actually managed to hit her a half dozen times or so in the course of the match. Drunken Boxing, it seemed, works just as well when one’s poison of choice is unbridled lust. But with no strength left in her limbs, Cassandra’s arms were casually swept away by Shiva’s expert parries, leaving her bruised and scarred chest even more exposed.

            Lady Shiva went to work on her daughter’s body, throwing a flurry of light, jabbing strikes that sent devastating pinpricks of pleasure all the way from Cassandra’s lower abdomen to her modest breasts. Each one beat a small, breathless coo from her slack-jawed mouth. Her mother was pulling her punches. She had been pulling them since the very first one. Whether it was because she herself didn’t know what possible effect a full blow would have on her daughter’s reversed qi, or because she knew exactly and wanted to prolong the lesson as much as possible, Cassandra could no longer tell. And she was beyond caring anyway.

            A forearm smash across her chest made Cassandra’s eyes shoot wide open. Stumbling backwards, almost completely off-balance, she emptied whatever reserves of energy she could muster just to stay upright. Her heart was pounding inside her chest and her nipples were aching deliciously. Just a few minutes ago, a snap roundhouse to the same spot had brought about her third orgasm, leaving her on the ground, quivering and arching her back and silently begging for more…

            Or was that the first? No, that wasn’t right. The first one had been a particularly exquisite elbow to her stomach that had folded her like a piece of paper, dropping her to her knees and leaving her a crumpled heap of shaking flesh. The second one started when a kick to the chin sent her flying for the ropes, her head pulled back high enough that for a moment all she saw were two electric suns burning above her head. She’d braced herself for a fall, but somewhere along the way, her arms got tangled on the ring ropes, their rugged ridges twisting and digging into her sweaty flesh, propping her up like a scarecrow and arousing her further. Seizing the moment, Shiva had used the caught Cassandra as a sandbag, systematically pounding a lewd symphony of wet moans out of her trapped body until tears of ecstasy rolled down her eyes and glistening juices ran down her thighs. And when she was done, Cassandra’s arms slid out of their bondage limply and she flopped to the ground a boneless mess, while her mother stood triumphantly over her like a warrior queen humiliating a broken pretender to the throne. But had that really been the second? Or maybe the third. How long had they been at it anyway? Where were they? And what was her name again?

            Stumbling around the ring, punch-and-pleasure-drunk, Cassandra realized she wasn’t just losing a fight this time. A palm to the solar plexus made her bounce against one of the corners, breathless and weak in the knees, and she felt a gust of wind somewhere to her side before hazily turning her throbbing head just in time to see Shiva spring out of the top rope with a spectacular flying kick that sent a rush of excitement down her legs before it even connected. When it finally did, the kick sent Cassandra crashing down to the mat like a ragdoll dropped off the side of a building, falling face first into a wet puddle of fluids that she didn’t even try to recognize. And as her brain bounced and slammed against the walls of her skull, sending ripples of mismatched pleasure across her increasingly dull body, Cassandra was struck by a feeling of intense familiarity. She’d felt like this before. More than once. She’d seen this darkness creeping up on the sides of her eyes. She’d tasted that feeling of exhaustion, of wanting to fall asleep more than anything else in the world. She knew what death felt like. And it was closing in.

            But in a flash of clarity brought about by yet another climax, as her body twitched and thrashed feebly on the ground in the aftermath of the brutal kick, Cassandra realized it was different this time. There was no disappointment, no shame, and no sense of leaving with a task unfulfilled. No peace, either. There was no light coming to welcome her or darkness aching to claim her. Even her most basic, primal fears had been suppressed, carved out of her by her mother’s blows. And she understood just how much the fight was taking out of her. Not just her will or her strength but everything else. Each punch, each kick, each strike purged something out of Cassandra. Even her memories were abandoning her. Her past had been beaten into retreat, her future had ceased to exist, and all she knew anymore was this moment, this battle, this bizarre whirlwind of agonizing pain turned into heavenly bliss. It wasn’t just the fight or her life that Cassandra was losing. It was herself.

            The realization gave new life to her punished body. Lungs filled with air brushed deliciously against bruised ribs. Blood pumped back into sleeping limbs. She used this second wind (or was it her third?) to force herself to open her eyes, and the first and only thing she was Lady Shiva, pressing one knee against her shattered abdomen and cocking her right fist back, aiming at her daughter’s chest. This, too, was familiar to Cassandra. Her mother had used that blow to bring her back to life once, the first time she died. And now she stood poised to do it again, if necessary. But this time there was no need. Cassandra brought herself back from the brink that her mother had taken her to, and as she writhed and moaned like a little girl waking up for school, she saw Shiva straighten up and get off her with a knowing smile on her face. She’d proven she could take it. And she could take even more.

            Cassandra pulled herself up from the spectacular afterglow slowly, driven by the promise of further ecstasy. For a moment her tired eyes came back to focus and she could see, clear as day, clearer than anything else she’d ever seen, the figure of her mother standing before her. Her naked arms glittered under a halogen sun, toned and strong, a gorgeous landscape of muscles running down from her shoulders to her hands which closed into fists with slow, cruel intent. From far away, Cassandra could hear her mother’s bones cracking with the exaggerated motion and she found the spectacle incredibly arousing. She knew those fists well. She’d felt their ruthless sting as they crushed flesh and bone alike, bending and breaking people to the will of their master. She’d been killed by them once. But now, in this moment that seemed to Cassandra like it had been stretched to fill her entire life, they had brought her nothing but ecstasy the likes of which she didn’t even know was possible. And Shiva knew this.

            With graceful, blooming movements, Lady Shiva’s legs slid into position. Her waist and chest followed suit, her whole immaculate body a single element that flowed in perfect unison, each part completely indistinguishable from the rest. As Cassandra struggled to gather as much breath as possible, her eyes were hopelessly drawn by her mother’s perfect stance, by the way her thick, taut thighs stretched the fabric of her pants and her chest rose and fell with effortless breathing inside her intricately beautiful vest. The stance was low and broad, typical of the most explosive, demolishing southern styles of kung fu. Cassandra knew all too well how devastating a single punch from that stance could be. At any other time, seeing her mother take that stance would’ve sent a creeping fear up and down her spine, born from the complete certainty that one blow could stop her heart and end her life.

            But tonight, Cassandra found she had no fear left. Her mother had done a stellar job of beating it out of her. It was a strange feeling, seeing Lady Shiva take a stance that meant murder was soon to follow, but knowing nobody would die tonight. She’d told her as much, first with words, and now with her own body language, with eyes full of understanding and a smile across her face that seemed amused at how much her daughter had taken to this new world of mixed emotions. She’d invited Cassandra here to teach her a lesson, and she had once more proven to be a fast learner. This pleased her. Although admittedly, she seemed to be telling her, not nearly as much as she was seemed to be pleasing Cassandra.

            Gathering what little energy she had left, Cassandra gave a howl that came out more like a low groan and threw herself at Lady Shiva one last time, her legs threatening to tangle up on each other, her arms barely responsive, and her nerves screaming for more. From the outside, it must’ve looked like a desperate struggle, a last ditch attempt by a fighter who refused to accept defeat. But there was no outside for Cassandra. There was no world, no people, nothing beyond the old, creaking ring she was sharing with her mother. And all she wanted was to share it a bit longer.

            Lady Shiva obliged. Stepping into her mad charge, she unleashed a massive uppercut right into Cassandra’s stomach that lifted the younger fighter off her failing feet and punched a sickening, choking noise out of her wide-open mouth that dragged what was left of the air in her lungs with it. Falling limply onto her mother’s shoulder, Cassandra reached around her impossibly tight body to pull her into the sloppiest of hugs. Thin lines of saliva cascaded from her slacked mouth onto Shiva’s back, but Cassandra couldn’t see them. The misty veil of pleasure had come down on her eyes once more, blurring reality around her until the only thing she could be certain of was how close she was. Close to death, or climax, or maybe both.

            Not letting up for one second, Shiva began hammering away at Cassandra’s sides, punishing them with a rain of delightful hooks that made her jump and gasp with every hit. Eventually, she forced Cassandra back off of her body, and her assault moved lower, twin knees crushing a devastating rhythm against her daughter’s lower midsection. Lost to the world in a damp haze of bruised lust, Cassandra wondered what it’d feel to die while under the effects of this blow, safe in the knowledge that her mother wouldn’t let it happen. To think such a beating, as thorough and destructive as any Lady Shiva had ever given anyone in her life, could bring Cassandra to such dizzying heights of pleasure, was a weird and intoxicating feeling. Born to be an assassin, trained to deal in pain and death, Cassandra had never thought of the skills she possessed as capable of delivering anything else. Even when she’d used them for good, to protect the innocent, a part of her still loathed the weapon she’d been sculpted into.

            But now, as Lady Shiva pushed her away and launched a kick that connected squarely with Cassandra’s chin, cranking her neck up and making her breasts bounce, it was as if she was also kicking open the door to a new world. A world of infinite possibilities, where fists could bruise skin but soothe the flesh, where the killing techniques she’d been taught since birth could be made to bring unbridled bliss and joy, and where fear and hatred were less than nothing. It felt like freedom. It felt perfect. And Cassandra knew this was the world her mother lived in, every day of her life.

            The coarse, rugged feel of the ring ropes brushing against her sweating back jolted Cassandra back to what little reality she could recognize. In quick succession, two crossed punches threw her head from side to side, and a crushing straight right sent Cassandra’s head spinning. Her sight went black for a moment and she worried that maybe this was going to be it, that her body would betray her and she would be knocked out before she could experience that final, mind-melting climax. But when her vision returned, she found herself on her knees, having blindly held onto her mother’s leg for support. Lady Shiva, however, had her own idea of support, and grabbed one of Cassandra’s hands by the wrist and twisted it, pulling out a loud yell of lewd joy out of her daughter’s drooling mouth as she wrenched her joint. Through crystallized eyes, Cassandra saw Shiva’s palm bearing down on her, and her body shivered with delightfully damp anticipation.

            The strike put her back on the humid mat once more, gasping out what little air she had left in her lungs and following it with a small eruption of spit that stopped just short of Shiva’s face and eventually landed in her vest, right over her chest. The tiny dragons woven into the fabric seemed to float out to laugh at her -- at the naked, spent woman who was being so easily dominated and beaten into a pulp by their master, and was finding it nothing short of a religious experience.

            But still it was not enough. She was close, as close as she could be, but she needed something more. And Shiva could tell. As her daughter coughed up some more spit, she saw and tasted the yawning desire in her unfocused gaze and stood to her full height, towering over Cassandra like a goddess of war, taut muscles gleaming under the hazy electric lights. For a moment, Cassandra’s swimming vision cleared just long enough to notice a small wet patch on her mother’s crotch, but a second later, all she could see were her thighs shifting and her foot bearing down upon her.

            “Gaahh!” Cassandra groaned as Shiva stepped roughly on her battered abs, driving her even further into mad desire. Her eyes rolled back and her limbs flailed in short spasms triggered by every subtle or forceful motion of her mother’s boot against her naked flesh. History’s greatest foot masseuse would’ve needed a thousand years of practice to even begin to match the climactic bliss running through every fiber of Cassandra’s being at that moment. She felt truly and completely subjugated, a slave to Lady Shiva’s every whim, dominated beyond all recognition and grateful beyond fathoming. Whatever her mother would choose to do with her broken body, Cassandra felt that not only would she welcome it, but beg for more. And in the throes of absolute pleasure and on the edge of what was surely to be a climax of apocalyptic proportions, that was exactly what she did.

            Cassandra found herself panting with her tongue out at her mother, spreading her legs and thrusting her hips up in an obscene display of unbridled lust that even Shiva found a bit appalling. It simply would not do to try and teach her daughter a lesson about independence and breaking free from the bondage of her past only to turn her into an oversexed glutton for punishment. But she had taken her this far. And this was still the first time she’d seen Cassandra actively showing that she needed her. Pleading -- begging for her. Hardening herself, Shiva lifted her foot up from Cassandra’s stomach, allowed her a few precious seconds to catch some manner of breath, then firmly and slowly pressed it down between her daughter’s toned, quivering legs.

            “Ggnnaagh! Oooww--Ahhh!” Cassandra yelled in a voice unrecognizable as her own. Her hands slipped on the sweat and spit and other fluids that had accumulated all over the mat, and eventually they gave up and just grabbed at her head. Her eyes rolled back even further and the threads of drool from her mouth turned into a veritable waterfall. Her entire body rocked as Shiva twisted and turned her foot against her sex, flawlessly attuning her to a form of pleasure never before experienced by man or beast. What came rushing at her made everything she’d felt in the last twenty minutes pale by comparison. It felt transcendent. It felt like heaven.

            And it knocked her completely unconscious, five seconds before her qi returned to its natural flow.

* * *

 

            The world seemed born anew as Cassandra regained awareness. The blue of the mat had come back to life, deep and gorgeous, like an ocean she’d been set adrift on, swept gently by quiet waves. Turning her view from its inviting immensity, Cassandra realized the waves were in fact caused by her mother, as her deft hands rubbed her motionless body back and forth. She saw her, but she could not feel her. In fact, she could not feel much of anything.

            “You are awake. Good. There is no lasting damage to your body, and I have soothed most of your bruising away. You will undoubtedly feel some soreness in the morning, but for now, there will be no pain.”

            “Like you… promised…” Cassandra said, and for a moment Shiva seemed surprised. Then pleased. And finally, satisfied.

            “What you were means nothing compared to what you choose to be. And there is nothing you cannot do if you so desire, daughter of mine.”

            The two women shared a tired, peaceful smile full of understanding, and Cassandra closed her eyes. One by one, her senses returned to her, each one carrying something from her mother with them. She felt her hands cradling her tired head, softly laying her down on her lap. She smelled her perfume, a thin essence of flowers carried by tears of sweat falling like morning dew. And she heard her voice, low and kind and beautiful, humming a lullaby in Cantonese, the melody taking Cassandra to a place without pain or pleasure or anything at all. It wasn’t even a place. It felt like nowhere. And somewhere in that void, Cassandra fell asleep.

            Sometime later, Shiva pulled away from Cassandra. For a moment there she’d worried her daughter had grown addicted to such newfound feelings. But in the end, seeing her sleeping like a babe, she felt the peace that even now grew inside of Cassandra’s soul. And, in turn, inside her own. With a lighter heart she stood up and walked towards her discarded jacket, but two steps in, Shiva felt an odd pressure on her back a split second before Cassandra struck her.

            “GHAKK!”

            The fight had barely made her break a sweat, but the blow still made Lady Shiva fall down to her knees. The realization of what just had happened hit her before she touched the mat. The tingling rush that echoed through her legs was just an underlining. Suddenly on all fours, Shiva allowed herself a few seconds to relish the thrill that had fired up inside her, then turned around to look at her daughter, standing up with her fist pressed forward, smiling a very familiar smile.

            “My turn… now…”


End file.
